Today in History

1501		Arthur Tudor of England marries Katherine of Aragon.
1812		As Napoleon Bonaparte’s army retreats form Moscow, temperatures drop to 20 degrees below zero.
1851		Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick is published in New York.
1882		Billy Clairborne, a survivor of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, loses his life in a shoot-out with Buckskin Frank Leslie.
1908		Albert Einstein presents his quantum theory of light.
1910		Lieutenant Eugene Ely, U.S. Navy, becomes the first man to take off in an airplane from the deck of a ship. He flew from the ship Birmingham at Hampton Roads to Norfolk.
1921		The Cherokee Indians ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres of land in Texas.
1922		The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) begins the first daily radio broadcasts from Marconi House.
1930		Right-wing militarists in Japan attempt to assassinate Premier Hamagushi.
1935		Manuel Luis Quezon is sworn in as the first Filipino president, as the Commonwealth of the Philippines is inaugurated.
1940		German bombers devastate Coventry in Great Britain, killing 1,000 in the worst air raid of the war.
1951		The United States and Yugoslavia sign a military aid pact.
1951		French paratroopers capture Hoa Binh, Vietnam.
1960		New Orleans integrates two all-white schools.
1960		President Dwight Eisenhower orders U.S. naval units into the Caribbean after Guatemala and Nicaragua charge Castro with starting uprisings.
1961		President Kennedy increases the number of American advisors in Vietnam from 1,000 to 16,000.
1963		Iceland gets a new island when a volcano pushes its way up out of the sea five miles off the southern coast.
1963		Greece frees hundreds who were jailed in the Communist uprising of 1944-1950.
1965		The U.S. First Cavalry Division battles with the North Vietnamese Army in the Ia Drang Valley, the first ground combat for American troops.
1968		Yale University announces its plan to go co-ed.
1969		The United States launches Apollo 12, the second mission to the Moon, from Cape Kennedy.
1979		US President Jimmy Carter freezes all Iranian assets in the United States in response to Iranian militants holding more than 50 Americans hostage.
1982		Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, is released by communist authorities after 11 months confinement; he would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and be elected Poland’s president in 1990.
1984		The Space Shuttle Discovery‘s crew rescues a second satellite.
1990		Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany sign a treaty officially making the Oder-Neisse line the border between their countries.
1995		Budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress forces temporary closure of national parks and museums; federal agencies forced to operate with skeleton staff.
2001		Northern Alliance fighters take control of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
2008		First G-20 economic summit convenes, in Washington, DC.
2012		Israel launches Operation Pillar of Defense against the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.